Curious about the “rack” wood platform? Is that DIY, store purchased etc? I’m looking for something along those lines if anyone has some ideas
I doubt it’s home made with that system.
A low-powered system for a small one-bedroom apartment update:
Since acquiring a lifetime license for Roon a year ago, I’ve been slowly tweaking my stereo as time and budget allows. I added a pair of Audeze LCD-3 headphones so I can listen late at night without annoying my neighbors. I also switch back & forth between my solid-state amp & the tube monoblocks on a monthly basis. Either option sounds really nice. They’re just a bit different and I enjoy them both. For my particular situation, this setup has worked really nice.
Furman Elite-15 PFI
Teddy Pardo 19/3 Linear PSU
Intel NUC with Ubuntu Server 18.04 LTS & Roon Server
Mojo Audio Mystique V2 SE DAC
Pass Labs HPA-1 headphone preamp
First Watt SIT-3 amplifier
deHavilland KE-50A monoblocks
Omega Super Alnico High Output Monitors
Audeze LCD-3 headphones (not pictured)
WireWorld Eclipse analog cables
Nordost Heimdall 2 USB cable
Audio rack & speaker stands built by me
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That’s a lovely system.
Nice rack, too.
Hey @woodford, thanks!
Building the rack & speaker stands was a fun part of this project. I have a friend who has a woodworking shop in a barn next to his house. While I was out at his place dog sitting for him & his wife, I managed to scrape together all of the scrap oak I could find laying around to build a nice frame. Then I put 1.5" (3/4" x 2) cherry shelves in it. It’s worked out really well.
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Wow! Amazing project. I may have to send these pics to my brother, who is similarly gifted with his hands.
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@woodford One of the benefits of this particular design is a single sheet of plywood sliced into 6 equal pieces makes three perfectly sized thick shelves. I used a biscuit joiner to mount them into the frame. It’s very heavy and solid. You can’t see it but there’s a milled aluminum isolation cone on the bottom of each column. Each speaker stand has mitered columns that are filled with lead so they’re as heavy as the rack is. They have sharp isolation spikes as well so they’re actually attached to the concrete subfloor under the carpet by four small points. Not having sound radiate through my floor into the bedroom of the guy who lives below me was one of my design goals.
A friend of mine who lives down in Louisiana has his equipment on a rack by the Box Furniture Co. I liked the simplicity of the look of his rack and thought it would be a doable challenge to see if I could build something similar.
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Hi, bought it on e-bay. Pm me of you want a link
Wow, great work. Mad skills.
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Since responses to my earlier post about my stereo system have focused on the woodworking part, I thought I would go ahead and post a photo of the speaker stands as well. They were built out of some small pieces of scrap white oak I found hidden on the shelves in the background. When I was building these I found out I was in need of some new tires for my car. So while they were getting replaced, I ask the guy at the shop if they had any lead wheel balancing weights they needed to get rid of. He said they had buckets of it. I asked how much to throw them into my trunk and he said $40. When I got home I found out I had a few plastic trash bags with 195# / 90kg of lead in them.
So the columns are mitered and hollow in the interior. I sealed them real well, filled them with lead & sand so each one weighs about 55# / 25kg. I countersunk brass threads on each corner and installed isolation spikes. Then I painted them black and installed a layer of cork along the top to provide a soft surface with some grip for the speakers. So far they’ve been rock solid platforms for my speakers to sit on. They were fun to build and the nominal cost let me spend more money elsewhere. 
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That’s great. Hope you don’t get lead poisoning while listening. Why did you paint such nice wood instead of stain?
Knowing the concern with lead, I was real careful with handling it and it is completely sealed so there’s no way any of it can ever get out. I also had a need for some lead in a small wooden sailboat I’m building. When used with care, it’s no more dangerous than it is while attached to your car.
The reasons for painting it was twofold. First, I was using some scraps that were not in my opinion “furniture grade” when viewed from all angles. I thought that stained they might not look as good as I wanted them to. The other reason was when I was having the speakers built, I had to make a decision as to whether I wanted them to blend with my Danish mid century modern furniture (teak / cherry) or contrast. In a moment of whimsy, I went with contrast and while talking with the owner, Louis Chochos, on the phone, I asked him if I could get them veneered in ebony macassar. I thought that white oak and a tropical hardwood from Indonesia might not look great together. I thought black was a better fit.
I was making a lot of this stuff up in my head as I went along using intuition and my gut so I may have gotten some of it wrong. But I’ve been pleased with the results.
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I agree. You have done a magnificent job with the whole thing. Is your sailboat an RC?
Outstanding work; the cork is a brilliant idea (my TT has an integrated cork “mat”).
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Happy to tell something about my main Roon setup. It’s al situated in our livingroom where we’ve managed to reach a compromise in my audio requirements and some livingroom cosiness/crazyness , all resulting in a high WAF (Wife Acceptance Factor). A Rotel-RSP1576 surround processor/pre-amp forms the heart of my media-infrastructure. Two Piega Premium 701 active speakers, two subwoofers; a Harman Kardon TS11 and a Teufel US 2112/8 SW which also houses a 7.1 amplifier for seven Piega S3 satellite speakers. Roon Rock is running on a NUC i7 (8Gb/256Gb-SSD), connected to the Rock is a Sennheiser BTD-500 USB bluetooth adapter to sent music to a Sony wh-1000xm3 noise-cancelling headphone. An SMSL-M100 DAC and Musical Fidelity X10D is feeding two active Bose speakers in my dining room. A Raspberry Pi touchscreen running Ropieee is connected to the Rotel using a SMSL-M300 DAC, this is also my mostly used music playing setting. Also: a customize Project RPM1 with Musical Fidelity XLPS phono-pre-amp for my vinyl collection. Everything is integrated in a Domoticz home-management-system. Storage on various Synology NAS backup-up in the cloud. At this moment 30.000 tracks in my own Roon library and Qobuz (Studio) as streaming service. Roon is serving 10 zone’s in my house and garden, consisting of Bluesound, Raumfeld, Chromecast and Ikea streamers/speakers. I’ve made my Roon NAS library available externally using Subsonic server on one of the NAS’s and Dsub clients on our Android phones. As I’m writing this post I realize there is much, much more, too much to bother you with!
One more thing: the Roon display on my TV is nothing more than a Google Chromecast screenshow with selfmade pictures of my favorite artists
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love the screenshow.
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D-Lead hand soap.
Handy stuff to have around if you’re dealing with lead. Firing ranges have it available to their patrons. Less than $10 for 8 oz on Amazon.
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Have those Emotiva, rock solid thing, I do even like them as I like my ma8900!
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